


Obligatory Home Planet Visit Filler Episode

by ganymedejam



Series: Touch-starved Idiots [7]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, First indirect kiss, Found Family, Keldabe Kiss, Minor Injuries, One Shot, Reader backstory, fluff if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:07:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28258188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ganymedejam/pseuds/ganymedejam
Summary: Post-Chapter 13/Pre-Chapter 14 AU. Reader character backstory centric. Warning for mentions of blood/wounds. [See the notes at the beginning]You and the Mandalorian get to talking a little about life before Nevarro. You let some details slip about your home planet, and Din "conveniently" finds out that there's a hefty bounty who's located there. You find yourself remembering the home you thought you had forgotten about, and he comes out with a stab wound and some cryptic philosophical lecturing from the Force-sensitive village leader. But at the end of the day, it's not all THAT bad.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Reader, Din Djarin/Reader
Series: Touch-starved Idiots [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037154
Comments: 23
Kudos: 117





	Obligatory Home Planet Visit Filler Episode

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where I was going with this one. I had a thought in my head and by the time I figured out that I didn't really want to go through with it, it was already over halfway done. So it's different from the other parts of the series. If you're looking for the fluff, you might wanna skim through!
> 
> This one features a good chunk of the reader's backstory, which I used as a vehicle for exploring yours and Din's mindsets for a bit so it's not directly related to their relationship. The "greeting" gesture that appears in the story is a loose reference to Filipino honoring-gesture called "mano" (which I am!), but I adapted it to make something more meaningful beyond general respect.

The question of where you both were from eventually came up. Din spoke briefly-- _very_ briefly--about the attack on Aq Vetina and his parents being killed by droids, though he didn’t hold it against you for asking. He discussed more about the covert that he was raised in, and you can tell he put Aq Vetina behind him. There’s no reason to visit there, and going back would only be a great source of pain for him.

There was a lull in the conversation; the topic of loss made it difficult for Din to want to expand on anything else.

He leaned back in the pilot’s chair and tilted his head back, his helmet thudding against the headrest. “The Mandalorians took me in. Cared for me. Trained me. Taught me The Way. That’s all I needed.”

You nodded at him, feeling so much empathy because a good chunk of your own story was the same. But then again, in this part of the galaxy it seems like everyone shares pages from the same book. You absentmindedly fiddle with a loose thread on your sleeve as a quiet sadness washes over you. “My parents are gone too. The Empire took over because it was a good enough spot strategically, I guess? They cut a deal with a local syndicate, which basically depleted our natural resources.”

“Where?”

“Mir-5. Ocean moon. Lots of sea life that could be sold off as culinary delicacies.” Din watches your expression sour at the thought. “So… yeah, syndicate wanted in on that.”

“What happened then?

You’re pulling at the thread now, watching the stitching unraveling from your arm cuff. “People got overworked to death, including my father. Mother took me off planet. Taught me everything she knew about ships and flying. Fought and died for the Rebellion. Hopped from one flight crew to the next until I met Greef Karga.”

You smiled and chuckled to yourself. “Had a nice gig on Nevarro for a while there, despite the awful climate. Until _you_ landed your busted ship on my dock, and now I’m here.”

Din sits up and turns his head to give you _that_ look--the one you somehow know he’s got a slightly annoyed expression--as if to ask you ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

“I _do_ like it here. With you, y’know.”

“Would you go back?”

“To Mir-5?” You think about it for a moment. “Maybe I would like to, yeah. But I don’t think there’s anything left. Of my village, I mean. It’s pretty, though, from what I remember.”

“Yeah?”

“Beautiful enough to dream about still,” you tell him wistfully, tilting your head up to look at the ceiling of the cockpit. Din stares at you for a long while, but you’re too caught up in your own sudden daydreaming to notice. He turns his chair and pulls up the nav display to search the route database for the moon’s coordinates while you’re not paying attention. There’s not much information about it in the nav; he makes a mental note to find someone who can update him on the moon’s current status.

  
  


\---

Much time has passed as well as a handful of bounties when Din finds out that the New Republic took control of Mir-5 and had cleared out the Imperial occupation. The syndicate involved with harvesting the resources splintered off after the war but there still remains a cell of dedicated mercenaries still trying to milk whatever they can take from the moon. The good news is that those mercenaries have a hefty bounty on their heads for their current activities as well as past crimes, so Din has a good reason to stop there. Well, besides the obvious.

  
  


You stop off at a rest station to refuel when Din announces where you’re going next. “Would you want to go back to Mir-5?”

You sit up straight and shoot him a skeptical look. “Why?”

“Syndicate got broken up after the war. Now the New Republic is looking for someone to clean up the last of ‘em.”

“Uh huh.” You narrow your eyes at him.

“Bounty’s worth enough to make the trip out there.”

“How _convenient_.”

“Yep.” Din replies, feigning indifference.

Your mouth curls into a smile. “And there’s no other reason why you would want to bother?”

His helmet turns and he’s giving you _that_ look again. “Yes or no?”

“Ah, well, sure?” you respond, and Din instantly senses your unease.

“I can skip out on it if you don’t want to go there.”

You sigh and rub the back of your neck, staring out the ship’s window. “We can. I honestly don’t know how I would feel about it until I’m there.” You turn your seat to look back at him and give him a somewhat anxious smile. “If anything, I can just stay in the ship.”

He nods and turns towards the side entry to the Razor Crest. “Depart in two hours if you’ve got anything to do here.” You stop him just before he passes through the doorway and tug on his arm to get his attention. “Thank you for thinking of me. It’s--it’s a lot, so thank you.”

Din smiles behind his helmet when he sees your doe-eyed look, but he pretends to be nonchalant about it. “S’fine.”

\--

It takes about a day and a half from the rest station to get to Mir-5. You lean on across the cockpit’s center console to get a better look through the ship’s viewport when the Crest enters the moon’s atmosphere. Your stomach churns slightly at the sight of the familiar coastline; the ship is currently flying further down the coast so you don’t have a chance to see if your village is still there. You’re saddened to see the evergreen forest that grew along the coast was cut back significantly to make room for the former Imperial structures and armaments. However, it looks like the tree line is slowly crawling back thanks to the lack of activity, and the structures look like they have been taken over by common folk now.

Din touches the Crest down on a landing dock that juts out on the edge of the cliffs lining the coast. You both finish up the landing procedures, then he turns to you and asks, “You feeling okay?”

You flip the last switch on the overhead control panel then peer out the window again, watching the crowd move amongst the buildings past the landing area. It stings a little to see how many new people have settled here in the guts of the Imperial takeover when before the whole coastline was just pockets of settlements. You see some individuals dressed in the traditional clothes of your people and you feel a little better and you have to remind yourself that so much has changed but that doesn’t mean all the changes have been bad.

Din says your name to get your attention. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m good. I’ll be alright.”

You both make your way out of the cockpit, and he starts preparing his gear for the bounty hunt. Meanwhile, you open up Din’s bunk to check on Grogu to make sure he’s okay, then sync your commlink with Din’s. “You can do this solo, right?”

He nods at you, and slips extra rounds of his shock rifle in the loops on his boots as well as the ammo belt across his chest.

“Let me know if you need an assist. I won’t be far from the ship. Just going to check around the port here with the kid.” you tell him, turning your head to look outside the hangar door.

“Okay.” He slings his rifle across his back and steps up next to you instead of walking out immediately. Din stands there, watching the crowd nearby with you for a bit, then clears his throat and reaches up to smooth his palm across your shoulder before stepping off the ship. “Won’t take long.”

“Be safe!” you call after him. His helmet turns to look over his shoulder and nods at you once again before slipping into an alleyway nearby.

\--

The Mandalorian makes short work of the syndicate cell, though it does take him a few hours to make sure all of the quarries are rounded up and grill them for any extra information. He commandeers one of their cargo transports and hauls the captives to the Crest. When he comes back, you’re sitting cross-legged on Din’s bed with Grogu in your lap in the middle of reading a holo-storybook that you found in the market. Grogu swipes his fingers at the projection of a fictional animal that resembles a flying lizard. “Hey, are you even paying attention? I’m trying to help with your cognitive development here!” you tell the child, booping him on the nose with your index finger. You look up when you hear the familiar thud of his boots and flash him a warm smile, “Hey you! Glad you’re back in one piece.”

Din smiles softly at the sight of you both beneath his helmet. “Yeah, it was nothing for the most part. One of ‘em caught me with a vibroblade though."

“What?! Do you need help?!” you asked, giving him a worried look. He shook his head at you. “Don’t need something right away. Can load the quarries just fine for now.” Your lips press into a thin line as you frown at him. “I’m _fine_ ,” he reassures you, “It’s bandaged, but I’ll need your help later.” 

Din starts shoving one of the captives into the carbonite freezer, and you help with the second one. The one you’ve got struggles a bit but you’re stronger than they think you are so they’re not able to get away from your grip, and this isn’t the first time that a bad guy didn’t take you seriously. You elbow them in the stomach and they double over, gasping against the gag they have over their mouth. They raise their head up, and they’re met with the muzzle of Din’s blaster aimed between their eyes. Din tilts his head down to look at the captive as he says, “Might want to rethink acting up like that.” Then he looks up at the other quarries who were observing what’s been happening from the bed of the cargo truck, “Like I said earlier, I can bring you in warm or cold. I really don’t care either way.” The rest of them accepted their fate without incident, and the Mandalorian was secretly glad; dead bodies are harder to move around, and he didn’t want to make his stab wound worse by moving around too much.

After the quarries were taken care of, you urged Din to take a shower and clean up so you could help him with his wound later. While he was doing that, you haggled with a local merchant to sell off the cargo truck that Din had commandeered from the syndicate thugs, then went off to buy dinner for the three of you.

When you came back, Din was sitting on a crate in the main holds waiting for you--shirtless. The sight caught you off guard and you sucked in air, feeling a low heat creeping across your face. Your eyes traveled his body: medium build with broad shoulders, toned arms, and tanned skin. Somehow you’re surprised at how little body hair he actually has, save for a light patch across his chest and a trail of dark hair at his navel traveling downward past the waistband of his pants. Maker, you really shouldn’t be looking _there_. You set your gaze away from that spot and start to notice the collection of scars decorated all over his body, some deep enough to warrant a quick soldering. 

Thankfully, Din was too busy to notice you staring like that; he’s practicing with Grogu by getting him to take the metal ball out of his hand using the Force. “You’re getting good at this huh, kid? We’re gonna have to see how far you can take it from me next time.”

“Um--” you stutter, which catches both their attention. Grogu makes a funny squeaking noise at you, and Din turns his head to look up at you.

“I, uh, got food.” you say, holding up your satchel, “Some credits for the truck. Am--am I allowed to see you like this?” A look of worry, and admittedly embarrassment, spreads on your face.

“As long as the helmet stays on.” His vocoder crackles when he chuckles slyly. “Unless you think your memory is good enough that you could pick my body out of a lineup. _Then_ we’re gonna have some problems.”

  
  


You smile playfully at him, “I’ll keep it hush-hush. I promise.” You set your bag down and pull the metal food containers out. Din watches you as you pull out the single induction burner and a pot from storage and place it on a crate nearby. You place the pot over the burner and turn the burner on to its lowest setting, then grab the cylindrical container you had with you and dump its contents in the pot. When you don’t unpack the rest of the items, Din tilts his helmet at you questioningly.

“Just heating up the soup part. Dinner needs to wait. Stab wound cleaning _now_.”

“Oh, right.” Din replies, as if he had already forgotten that he got pierced by a vibroblade earlier that day. He gets up and ushers Grogu into the hammock, “Just hang on for a bit. Gotta get patched up.”

You go to the refresher to clean your hands and come back with the ship’s med kit, and find Din waiting for you with his back turned to you so you could have access to the wound. 

“Scoot,” you told him, tapping on his shoulder. He immediately obliged and shifted forward to give you enough room to kneel on the crate. You set the med kit down next to you and flipped the lid open, then you slowly peeled off the temporary bandage Din applied to the wound after he got out of the fresher earlier. He grunts in discomfort as the wound starts to weep and you hold a cotton pad just below the wound to keep the blood from dripping down his back while you examine it.

You lean in close and he tenses under your fingers the moment you touch him. He hisses in pain from the examination, but when the sensation ebbs he’s still rigid for another reason: the skin-to-skin contact. While you were gone he was mentally psyching himself up for it. You’ve never touched any of his body unclothed before, and it’s been so long that he’s been touched by anyone that he didn’t know how he would feel about it. He wasn’t expecting your hands to be so _hot_ ; your palm radiates warmth along his shoulder blade and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

Meanwhile, you’re trying to focus on the task at hand, and certainly _not_ on the fact that you’re touching his bare skin right now. _Not_ noticing the tiny moles that are dotted everywhere on his skin. _Not_ being painfully aware of his warmth and how tight his muscles are under your hands. Trying to beat down the urge of sliding your hands everywhere you can because hey, when will you ever be able to do this? It’s too bad you’re a decent person and reign in your impulse control anyway. After all, the man’s bleeding from an open wound right now, and there’s the kid watching you from the hammock anyway.

You nod to yourself, satisfied with the fact that what you’re seeing isn’t in need of more urgent care. “Not too bad, I think. It’s shallow. Just needs some healing paste and a secure bandage.” He nods and keeps as still as possible while you dip two fingers into the medicine pot containing the antibacterial healing paste and spread it across the wound. Din fidgets from the cold, slimy sensation, and you give his shoulder a reassuring rub, which causes him to make a light grunt in pleasure--though you mistake it for discomfort.

“Relax. The bandage won’t set right with your muscles so tight.” you tell him quietly. You lean back and watch him, his shoulders rising and falling with every slow inhale and exhale. Once he’s loosened up enough, you apply the bandage to the wound then crisscross a couple strips of medical tape to keep it in place.

You press one palm gently between his shoulder blades and your free hand finds its way back to his shoulder again. You lean in close, tilting your head as if you were going to talk into his ear. “All done. You good?”

His muscles move beneath your hands as he shifts, leaning more into your touch. “M’good.”

“Is it hurting a lot still?”

“No. Just feels dull.”

“Okay. It’s not bad but take it easy for a bit to let it heal. I’m gonna get a bowl ready for the kid.” you tell him as you rise to your feet.

At that moment, Din wants to say, ‘ _Stop. Can you stay like that some more?_ ’ but instead he says “Thank you.” before hastily grabbing his shirt and shutting himself in the refresher. He sighs heavily to himself, still feeling your touch burn across his skin.

  
  


\---

  
  


The next day, Din pilots the Razor Crest near the area where your settlement used to be. As you fly over you see that the wood buildings are still there, but the memory of it makes your stomach churn. You know that next to nobody that you knew back then would be left, and you had no idea what you would find.

Din sets the landing gear and finishes up the rest of the landing protocols. He spins in his chair to look at you, “You sure you want to go?”

“Yeah, I’m---I’ll be fine.”

Din’s gaze lingers on you for a while to observe you before wordlessly getting up to prepare to depart. 

You make your way off the Crest, with Grogu in tow in his sling, and Din following close behind. When you approach the settlement, you see a variety of faces that you don’t immediately recognize dressed in your people’s traditional blue and green hues. Some of the people stop in their tracks to look at you. Their expressions are all the same: a quizzical look aimed at you because you look the same as them but with different clothes, and then wide-eyed when they see the Mandalorian behind you armored in shining beskar. You bow your head to each one to greet them, and they bow their heads in return. Some of them stop and ask if you’re one of them, and are greeted with a smile and ‘ _Welcome home_ ’ each time you say ‘ _Yes, but long ago_.’ Others have been around enough to call you by your name. Din happens to notice that you seem to tense up a fraction every time someone tells you ‘ _Welcome home_ ’ and he makes a mental note to talk about it to you later. The people don’t ask questions but you do hear some murmurings regarding Din when they think you’re out of earshot.

You approach the center of the settlement, which has a larger vernacular house raised on a platform. Statues of coiled sea serpents with golden eyes and dorsal fins across their back flank either side of the steps leading up to the house. Din hesitates ascending the steps with you, and he waits at the bottom. “I’ll stay here.”

You sigh softly at him then smile and usher him up the steps by his elbow. “You have to greet the leader if you visit. Everyone does.” You hear him grunt as he moves up the steps with you. When you both reach the top, an elderly man is sitting in a chair in the veranda, busy repairing a fishing net. He looks up at you and narrows his eyes, focusing his vision, and when he recognizes you he says your name and a word after it that Din doesn’t understand.

“Means ‘ _child_ ’, but more like ‘ _kin_ ’?” you whisper to Din. The elder rises to his feet and you take one of his hands in yours, guiding the hand to touch his knuckles at your chest right below your collarbone, and then you bow your head to touch it to your forehead. You and the man have a brief conversation before he leads you into the house where the settlement’s leader currently is.

You find the leader sitting at an ornate desk, enjoying some sort of hot beverage while she pours over information on a datapad. She was a short, stocky elderly woman with intricately braided silver hair that you recognized immediately. When you last saw her, she was middle-aged and newly appointed to the role of leader, but she looked very much the same as you remember: soft, narrow eyes with a wide mouth that was always smiling gently. You said her name, and Din watched you as you greeted her in much the same way as the previous elder. This time, you knelt to one knee before you took the woman’s hand to press it to your chest and forehead.

Din stands awkwardly behind you while you hold a conversation with the elder. He finds out the following about you: that you’ve been gone for twenty-two years. Your father was an accomplished fisherman and taught you how to dive for mollusks and spear fish. Your mother was an innovator who spent most of her adult life dedicated to integrating new technologies and quality-of-life changes for all the moon’s settlements. As a child, you were quiet, kept to yourself a lot, and spent more time studying nature or taking equipment apart than actually being of any productive use for what needed to be done. 

The elder sets her gaze on Grogu, who’s become restless in his sling. She looks at you quizzically and asks, “Your child?”

You look down at Grogu and smooth your palm across his head, then tilt your head towards Din. “Uh, sort of? But he belongs to the Mandalorian.”

The elder chuckles, “And does this Mandalorian look like _that_ underneath all of that beskar?” You hear Din make an agitated noise behind you, and you press your mouth into a thin line to suppress your own laughter at his expense.

“Ah, he’s like all the rest. So serious.” the elder says, leaning lazily back in her chair as she eyes him up and down. She turns her attention back to you, “You came back. Do you intend to stay?”

You hesitate for a moment, even though you already knew the answer right away. It almost felt wrong to say that to the elder. “N-no. I’m staying with Mando. I’m helping him with the child.”

“Odd sort. A bounty hunter with a baby.” she says, taking a sip of her drink and eyeing Din as she does so. Her gaze moves down back to Grogu in the sling, “Why this one, I wonder.”

Din tilts his head at the elder. “What makes you so curious?”

“He’s interesting,” she says as she smiles at the child. Grogu’s eyes meet the elder’s and they stare at each other for a while with an intensity that reminds you of when Ahsoka communicated with Grogu on Corvus. She breaks the stare and her eyes flicker back up to look at Din again. “What do you know about the Force? About Jedi?”

You and Din both seem to shrug at the same time. “Grogu has these… powers that manipulate the Force. We met a Jedi during our travels.” you tell her.

The elder nods, “A master? The child will need one. You did not offer the child to the Jedi?”

“It’s… complicated.” Din replied. “She told me she can’t train him.” The elder hums in response, her eyes flickering between you and Din. “Is that so..”

You open your mouth to say something but the elder waves her hand at you, then turns around to rifle through a cabinet nearby. She comes back with a chit in her hand, and she slides it across the desk for you to take. “This is a record of what I know--the information I’ve collected, though it’s not much. Keep it so you know more about what you need to do for the child.”

You reach out your hand and hesitantly touch the chit with your fingertips. “Are you sure? Isn’t this information valuable to you?”

“It’s all in my head.” she says with a grin, tapping her index finger to her temple. “And for some of it, I have no use for. I don’t see myself going off planet in the future.” You nod and slip the chit into the front pocket of your jacket, then tell the elder, “I don’t know how to thank you for this. It will help us a lot.” The elder inclines her head at you, signaling that you are free to go. “Be well. And welcome home.”

She notices you bristle at her words, but says nothing. You make your way to the front door and Din follows behind you, but then the elder calls out to him. “Mandalorian.” He stops and turns his head to look at her, and she waves him back over to her desk. He gives you a nod to let you know that you can leave him behind, then he approaches the elder.

“As you are like the child’s father, I thought I should tell you this,” she says, “Beings like him. Like me, and all the rest. We are special and then not. The Jedi would say that emotion taints our abilities to do good. Those that walk the Dark Side believe that unbridled passion and power go hand in hand and should be exploited for personal gain.”

“The line between light and dark is so very thin for anyone. For us, with the Force, is a strength to create awe and horror. It won’t be easy for him, or for the two of you, to decide how that balance shifts. Trust in the child to know what he wants, and hold him in your arms when he is uncertain. We all know what it feels like to not belong, to live through times where we don’t feel _held_ .” And Din knows that the elder is talking about herself. About him. About Grogu. About _you_.

She turns her head to look out the window and she suddenly looks solemn. “I’ve lost so much here. I smile for the life growing in the ashes. For the peace sprouted from the bones of violence, which I nurtured all these years as the leader of the people here.” The elder looks back at Din, “I never had a proper master. I found myself yearning for one, and the child might too. But as you can see, life can still be well for some of us that never have a chance to learn more. Living life well as it is is such a rarity for anyone. Maybe that’s all you can hope for.”

Din shifts his weight to one side, regarding the elder with his gaze behind his visor. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

She smiles at him softly, her eyes taking on a warm shine. “Your mind is far too open. You’re _loud_. Seeking answers to questions that don’t have definitive answers. Even your boy thinks so.”

  
  


\---

You make your way back to the Crest, and you instantly hit the fresher for a shower. Din had already fed Grogu dinner and put him down to sleep in the hammock by the time you got out of the refresher. The back hangar was still up, and Din had set some crates for you both to sit down at the top of the ramp, which was facing the ocean. You found him sitting on one of the crates with his chest piece in his lap, a small tool in his hand as he busied himself with tuning up the circuits on the inside. 

You took a seat next to him, slumping forward and leaning your elbows on your knees as you watched the sun slowly start to set. About five minutes passed before you decided to say something.

“Din.”

“Hmm?” Something beneath his fingers crackled with electricity as he prodded the offending circuit with his tool.

“I’m glad we came here.” He stopped what he was doing, turning his helmet to look at you. “Yeah?”

“I am. I was worried about how I’d feel about this place, but I feel… okay, I think?” You looked up at him and he noticed your eyes seemed to flicker back and forth as if you were searching for something.

“What?”

“I felt weird, when everyone said ‘w _elcome home_ ’ as if I always belonged here. As if I never left.”

“This was your home once.”

“Yeah, but it’s not mine _now_. It was here, then a handful of other planets, dozens of ships, then Nevarro. And now home is on the Crest.”

He smiles behind his helmet at your comment, fully glad to know that you feel like home with him. Din gently puts the chest plate and the repair tool down off to the side, then sits up straight to focus his attention on you.

“Feels strange. Like something wants me to come back here. Stay here. But I don’t _want_ to.”

“Then don’t.” he tells you. "You just said it. You belong on the Razor Crest." ' _With me_.' a little thought echoes, chasing after his statement.

"I'm not going to." You reach up to rub the back of your neck, and you sigh tiredly. “It just feels strange, to slip into things that I haven’t really done in a very long time. It’s weird that I remember how to do things.”

“Like the hand thing?”

You blink at him and give him a confused look. He motions at you, a sloppy version of the greeting you gave the elders. “Oh! Yeah, that. I forgot to tell you about that.” You turn in your seat and take one of his hands in yours.

“So this is a greeting you usually give to people older than you, or, really, someone you hold in high regard. And also family.” you tell him as you guide him through the motions. You touch his knuckles to your chest beneath the collarbone, “This part means ‘ _You’re here in my heart_ ’.” You lift his hand to touch his knuckles to your forehead, “This part means ‘ _You’re here in my mind’._ ’ You lower his hand, but you don’t let go, and instead let the touch remain suspended in the space between you. Din watches as your mouth curls into a smile, “So it basically means something like ‘ _I am always thinking fondly of you.’_ which I guess is a very roundabout way of telling someone you care about them. _”_ Din feels a sudden tightness in his chest, like something fluttering to get out. Your touch is so oddly intimate now that you've taught him the meaning behind the hand gesture. He wants to ask you, ' _Is that how you feel about me?_ ' but he doesn't have quite enough courage to say something like that outright.

“Like.. this?” Din asks, oddly quietly as he pulls your hand back toward himself and tries to do the same gesture. Your knuckles brush against the fabric of his shirt at his chest, and then you feel the kiss of cold metal on your skin as he them to the forehead of his helmet. He knows _exactly_ what he means to say with what he's doing, though you are not yet aware of this.

You feel yourself blush and your heart absolutely melts at Din’s attempt at the gesture. Your better judgement tells you that he’s doing it to understand it a little better. Oh, but you soon find out that you’re _wrong_ . He’s still holding your hand when he tells you, “Mandalorians have something like that: _kov’nyn_. A headbutt.”

You can’t help but chortle and give him an incredulous look, “A _what_ now?”

“Well, a real _kov’nyn_ intends on bashing an enemy’s skull. The one I’m talking about… it-it’s nicer.” He reaches up and takes your face in his hands and touches his helmet to your forehead and lets it rest there for a couple of seconds. Your hands seek out his when he takes them away from your face as he moves his head back, letting yourself slot your fingers between his own.

You smile at him and give his hands an affectionate squeeze. “So that’s how Mandalorians show that they care?”

Din tilts his helmet at you, secretly grinning behind the metal, and says in the most deadpan tone, “That’s how we _kiss_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm promising myself that the next one is going to be... spicier. My soul desperately yearns for it!
> 
> However, if you did find the parts where I delve more into Din's and/or reader's mindset then let me know! I'm all for describing mental states and emotions in flowery bullshit.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all for reading! Every time I get kudos or a comment, it warms my heart <3


End file.
